Consider Arthur Seale, who, in 1992, along with his wife, Irene, kidnapped Sidney Reso, the president of Exxon International, locked him in a box in an unventilated storage unit in New Jersey, and demanded ransom. When Reso died four days later, the couple secretly buried him and continued to press for the ransom. Or Jeremy Strohmeyer, a handsome eighteen-year-old former honor-roll high school student, who in 1997 sexually molested and strangled a seven-year-old girl in the ladies room of a gambling casino in Nevada. Or Rabbi (Rabbi!) Fred Neulander, who had been widely respected at his well-attended affluent temple in New Jersey until he had an affair of Fatal Attraction proportions in 1994 and hired two hit men to kill his wife of twenty-nine years. They bludgeoned her to death with a lead pipe. The rabbi is currently serving thirty years to life; Arthur Seale and Strohmeyer are incarcerated forever without parole. Seale’s wife, Irene, is serving a lesser sentence of twenty years because she cooperated with the police and led them to Reso’s grave.
The process of securing an interview with accused murderers or convicted murderers like these is often long and arduous. First of all you can’t do it unless the prisoner agrees and makes it known to the proper authority. On our part this then requires a lot of petitioning and many phone calls for official permission to whoever is in charge, be it the warden, the sheriff, or the state superintendent of prisons.
Once at the prison you have to leave whatever you are carrying—pocketbook, wallet, mirror, and so on—before you enter the restricted area. You are not allowed to bring in gifts, even books or magazines. Sometimes you can bring in a certain number of quarters that the prisoner, provided he or she is in the common visiting room, can use to buy candy, hamburgers, or soft drinks from vending machines. These are eagerly accepted.
I’ve visited many prisons all over the country, once touring an execution room with its equipment for lethal injections. Whenever I make one of these visits, for whatever the reason, I am haunted for days after. I hear the noises in my head from the prisoners as I’ve walked down the halls, the shuffle of the shackled legs, the clang of the lockup gates behind me. When I leave the prison, I take deep gulps of fresh air. I never say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” But I do say, “Thank God I am free.” The prisoner I’ve just interviewed, no matter how hideous the crime he or she has committed, has become a real person to me, and I have to clear my head.
The fact that I can sometimes feel empathy for someone who has brutally killed another human being doesn’t mean that I can understand the murder. But at the time I am sitting opposite the killer, I am not judgmental. I don’t say, “How could you be such a monster?” I do, however, say, “There are people who think you are a monster. How do you respond to that?” During the actual interview I am not feeling a lot of emotion. It is when I leave that the force of the crime hits me. Why? I ask myself. Most of these killers, when you meet them, are mild-mannered, polite, articulate. Some, like the rabbi, still claim their innocence, but most of the convicted murderers I’ve interviewed express great regret.
OF THE MANY MURDER CASES I’ve been involved in, five stand out in my mind.
The most intriguing murderer turned out not to be one. When I first sat down with the mysterious and debonair Claus von Bülow in 1982, he had been convicted one month earlier of twice trying to murder his very wealthy wife, Sunny, who was then in a coma and remains in a vegetative state to this day. His weapon was a hypodermic needle, which the jury believed he had used to inject Sunny von Bülow with insulin, a potentially fatal drug for his wife, who had a serious low blood sugar condition.
The case had ignited worldwide attention, given Sunny von Bülow’s fortune of $75 million, the testimony against von Bülow by his stepchildren (a prince and a princess of Austrian nobility), and Claus’s attractive lover, Alexandra Isles. (Isles had cut off her relationship with von Bülow on the advice of her attorneys when he was indicted.) Von Bülow himself had not testified at the trial and everybody in the media, both print and television, was scrambling for an exclusive interview with him to hear his side of the story. I had no particular entrée to von Bülow and never thought I’d get the interview, were he to give one. So I was surprised when I received a call soon after his conviction from Andrea Reynolds, von Bülow’s adviser and current lover. She had something to tell me, Mrs. Reynolds said. Would I please come see her at the von Bülows’ Fifth Avenue apartment?
I was cool in more ways than one when I arrived. I didn’t know what the “something” was Mrs. Reynolds wanted to tell me, plus the fact that it was a foul, cold day and I’d ruined my new suede boots in a puddle of slush. Von Bülow’s apartment was opulent and in one of Fifth Avenue’s grandest buildings, but I’d seen opulent before. Mrs. Reynolds invited me to have tea in the library, and while I was sitting there, mourning my boots, in walked the tall, smiling Claus von Bülow. He shook my hand, sat down, and began to talk about a mutual friend of ours, an Englishman. He acted as if we were dinner partners who were meeting for the first time, so I did, too. “Uh, how is he and how is the family?” I responded politely about our friend. And yes, I’d like another cup of tea. Then he very calmly, quietly explained what his situation was.
His sentencing was two weeks away, his appeal of the guilty verdict, if accepted, even further away, and the prosecution, fearing he was a flight risk, wanted to imprison him. He impressed upon me that he was very devoted to his and Sunny’s only child, Cosima, that he had no intention of skipping bail and abandoning her, that he wanted to correct the misrepresentations about him in the media and remain at home.
I realized then I was auditioning for an exclusive interview. Why me and not everyone else clamoring for the opportunity? Because Andrea (who now asked me to call her by her first name) told me later that she had called the William Morris Agency, where she had a connection, and asked who the best person would be to interview her lover, and the agency had said that I was. Von Bülow must have felt confident enough of her opinion and comfortable enough with me because I got the interview.
The prosecutor who’d won the murder conviction was furious that I was going to give von Bülow his moment in the court of public opinion. Indeed, von Bülow seemed sincere and convincing during the interview about his loyalty to, if not love for, his wife, whom he described as “the most beautiful woman” yet also “a deeply unhappy person…with virtually no self-confidence.” He admitted that the conflict they’d had over his work schedule had brought them in recent years to the brink of divorce (Sunny wanted him to spend the entire summer with her at their “cottage” in Newport, Rhode Island, as well as a month in Europe). He was also candid about the sexless relationship they’d had at Sunny’s instigation ever since the birth of Cosima, by then a teenager, and their agreement that he could do what he wanted “but be discreet.” But there remained the issue of his conviction for attempted murder. “One final question, simply this: Mr. von Bülow, did you try to kill your wife?” I asked him. “No, I did not,” he replied. Our interview was over.
I don’t know whether this interview had anything to do with the outcome, but von Bülow was allowed to stay out on bail. Even better for him, after hiring the famous Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, he was granted a new trial. In June 1985 the second jury declared von Bülow not guilty, based on new medical evidence and inconsistencies and conflicting testimony in the first trial. The onetime murderer was a free man, and soon afterward I interviewed von Bülow again.
He was as elegant and formal and mysterious as ever as we rehashed the trials. He reminded me of those British actors in old movies playing the master of the house wearing a smoking jacket and velvet slippers. But what struck me the most about von Bülow was that at no time during our meetings and interviews did I hear him say, “This is a terrible thing that’s happened to me.” In all the time I spoke with him, he never complained. He never raised his voice. He never got emotional. He was a very cool character.
He was not above the fury of his stepchildren, however, who
remain convinced to this day that he “murdered” their mother. Alexander von Auersperg and Ala Kneissel (now Isham) launched a civil suit against him after he was exonerated, and von Bülow, evidently fearing a loss this time, capitulated to their demands. He renounced any claim on their mother’s estate and basically got out of town. Von Bülow now lives in London attending dinner parties and occasionally writing theater and art reviews. Sunny, now in her seventies, remains comatose in a nursing home in New York.
An aside. In the subsequent film about the von Bülows, Reversal of Fortune, Glenn Close played Sunny and Jeremy Irons played Claus. Irons, whose portrayal earned him the Academy Award for best actor in 1991, told me he watched my interviews with von Bülow again and again to capture that sort of suave charm and reserved hauteur he had. Among the rumors about the mysterious von Bülow at the time was that he was a necrophiliac, which led to this exchange toward the end of the movie. Ron Silver, who played defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, says to Irons, “You’re a very strange man,” and Irons, aka von Bülow, responds: “You have no idea.” And that’s the way I felt about him…indeed, a very strange man.
The most dramatic prison interview I conducted was with actor Robert Blake, who was also charged with murdering his wife, but, unlike von Bülow, was denied bail and had to spend almost a year in prison awaiting trial. When I interviewed him in Los Angeles County Jail in February 2003, the preliminary hearing had just begun on whether to free him on bail. The former Emmy-winning star of the seventies television series Baretta looked gaunt and seemed emotionally drained. Handcuffed and wearing a prison-issue orange jumpsuit, the seventy-year-old actor had spent most of every day of the last year in solitary confinement, supposedly for his own protection, in the cell formerly occupied by O. J. Simpson. No wonder he looked as awful as he did.
He was charged with shooting Bonny Lee Bakley, his wife of less than six months and mother of his baby daughter, in the head on May 4, 2001, while she waited for him in a car after dinner near a restaurant in Studio City. Though he claimed he was still in the restaurant at the time she was shot, a year later, Blake was arrested for her murder. The incriminating evidence had come from two former stuntmen, both heavy drug users, who claimed Blake had hired them to kill her.
Blake had been desperately trying to get on television ever since, not to plead his innocence but to talk to his little daughter, Rosie, whom he hadn’t seen in a year. Two sets of his defense lawyers had quit his case, fearing that he might incriminate himself if he spoke in public. His third attorney also strenuously objected but had not resigned. The last stumbling block was the Los Angeles County Jail, whose sheriff, Leroy Baca, had steadfastly refused to let any journalist, with or without the lawyers’ approval, do an interview from the jail. But I had a reason to believe I could make him change his mind. (By the way, this was the same Sheriff Baca who was in charge of Paris Hilton when she was sent to jail in 2007.) I called him and asked if I could meet with him the next time I was in Los Angeles. We did, and the sheriff could not have been nicer, but said, “I can’t give you permission. It’s against regulations.” And here is where I played my trump card.
I’d interviewed prisoners there before, I pointed out. “Who?” he asked, startled. “When?” “In 1996. The Menendez brothers,” I replied. (You’ll read about them later.) He hemmed and hawed and finally agreed to check it out. He had trouble believing I was right, but I was. And he relented. “There is a precedent,” Sheriff Baca told me. “In that case, you can do it.” Even though I was trying so hard to get his permission, I was still surprised when he gave it.
So the scene was set for the sensational, touching, hilarious, wild, peculiar interview with Blake. He cried at times, was hostile at others, talked directly to his two-year-old daughter, and, in general, acted as if he were still acting.
Blake was convinced he’d be convicted and never see his daughter again. When I asked him what he wanted to say to Rosie, his eyes brimmed with tears. “Life is a spectacular gift, Rosie,” he said directly to the camera. “Don’t ever sell it short. And I’ll always be there with you. I’ll never, ever leave you.” And then this wasted man started to sing to her. “‘You’re the end of the rainbow,’” he sang, tears spilling down his cheeks. “‘My pot of gold. You’re Daddy’s little girl to have and hold.’” On and on he went. It was as pathetic as it was unbelievable.
When I asked him, “What if you are found guilty?” he angrily shouted these lines at me: “What do I care? How do you kill a dead man? What are they going to do to me that they haven’t done already? They took away my entire past. They took away my entire future. What’s left for them to take? They’re going to take my testicles and make earrings out of them?”
You can’t top that.
After the interview aired, the judge granted him bail and released him. Blake looked so pale and thin the judge might have been afraid he would die in jail. Blake thought our interview was the reason he was released. He still says so.
In March 2005, Blake was found not guilty of murdering his wife. There was no physical evidence linking him to the murder and the drug habits and contradictory statements of the retired stuntmen discredited their testimony. Our interview may also have played a small role in his acquittal; parts of it were played at the trial. At the press conference afterward Blake publicly thanked me.
As for his little daughter, Rosie, she has been adopted by Delinah Blake Hurwitz, Blake’s older daughter from his first marriage, a professor of developmental psychology. I met her and she was lovely. Blake did something right.
Of all the convicted murderers I interviewed, I was closest to Jean Harris. Too close, in fact, but I’ll get to that. She was the most improbable murderer. Harris had been the prim and proper headmistress of an elite school for girls, the Madeira School, in McLean, Virginia. Her victim was her longtime and unfaithful lover, Herman Tarnower, a well-known cardiologist and author of the best-selling book The Scarsdale Diet. Harris was fifty-six when she shot Tarnower. He was sixty-nine. Hardly the age, one would think, for a crime of passion, but that’s what it was.
Harris, who had been “seeing” Tarnower, as she would put it, for fourteen years, began to come apart on a Saturday morning in March 1980. An insomniac, she hadn’t slept a wink. The day before she had expelled four popular students for smoking pot, the girls’ furious parents were at the school berating her, and there was a student protest going on in support of the “Madeira Four” outside her window. She had also run out of the antidepressants Tarnower had been supplying her with for ten years, but when she phoned him for a new shipment, he added more stress. At one point in their relationship he had promised to marry her and then backed off. She knew that the lifelong bachelor was having an affair with his young assistant, but Tarnower rubbed salt in the wound when he now told Harris that she would not be seated on his right at an upcoming tribute to him nor, indeed, would she even be seated at his table.
It was all too much for the already fragile Harris, and after writing Tarnower a furious letter about the young assistant, she said she prepared to kill herself. But she wanted to have one last conversation with Tarnower before she died. And the fatal sequence began.
On March 10 Harris put a loaded gun in her purse, bought a bouquet of flowers, and drove five hours from Virginia to Tarnower’s house outside New York. It was 10:00 p.m. and raining when she arrived. He was in bed, told her he didn’t want to talk, and to make matters worse, he turned his back on her. Then she saw a negligee and a pair of slippers in the bathroom and lost it completely. What happened next became the central point of the trial. The defense claimed Harris held the gun to her head, Tarnower intervened, and in the ensuing struggle the gun accidentally went off, fatally wounding the cardiologist. The prosecution claimed she had shot the doctor on purpose. Either way, Tarnower lay dying on the floor from four bullet wounds. Harris was arrested, convicted of second-degree murder, and sentenced to fifteen years to life.
This bare-bones recital of
the facts in no way conveys how sensational this case was at the time, and the ripples it caused for years to come. Feminist groups cast Harris as the victim of an uncaring man who threw her over for a younger woman. In their eyes she shouldn’t have been convicted of anything when clearly, Tarnower had been the SOB. Her imprisonment raised such passion that an ad hoc group formed called the Jean Harris Defense Committee, which orchestrated a letter-writing and signature-gathering campaign to petition Governor Mario Cuomo to grant Harris clemency. Every year, as regular as clockwork, he refused.
I had written many letters to Mrs. Harris and her lawyer asking for an interview so that she could tell her side of the story. Nearly two years after her conviction she finally consented to sit down with me at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison for women in New York.
I’ll never forget my interview with Harris, the first she’d given. When I met her in prison, she was wearing the same good-little-girl leather hair band she’d always worn, a white shirt under a beige cable-knit sweater, and still looked very much the schoolmistress. Though she had lost an appeal for a new trial just two days before, she was calm and dry-eyed when she sat down with me. Until I asked her about Tarnower.
“Do you still love him?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you think about him?” I asked.
And then she crumpled and completely broke down. “Don’t. Don’t,” she sobbed, pushing me away with her hands.
“I won’t. I won’t,” I quickly responded, not wanting to cause her any more pain. “Let’s talk about your life here a little bit, all right?”
But Jean Harris wanted to talk about Tarnower.
“I think about him constantly,” she said through her sobs. “It’s one of the reasons I don’t care if I get out. I can’t imagine what it would be like out there, without him. Isn’t that stupid!?”
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